The fluoro-vest economy

Found this article about Australia’s ‘fluoro-vest economy’ in the smh – and just couldn’t agree more:

It’s boom time in Australia and if you’re in the fluoro-vest economy, you’re so loaded you can commute to your second home in Bali. For the rest of the country, however, it’s getting a tad difficult to just, you know, live.

Australians with low or average incomes have been forced for years to be creative: some stay in share houses well into their 30s; others move back with parents; one friend in the not-for-profit sector confessed recently he was staying with an incompatible but corporate girlfriend because he could not afford to rent by himself.
Take this: Finish a delicious, very large chicken and salad sandwich ($5), before taking the train ($2.25) home to a massive apartment ($400 a week), stopping off on the way at a bar to meet some friends for a cocktail ($8) where the waitress – seemingly unaware of the concept of standard measures – slugs a couple of extra shots in the drink.

No, it’s not Sydney, circa 1992 – it’s Manhattan, 2012.
You do not get much change from $10 for a sandwich in Sydney, a bus from the city to Bondi is $3.30, cocktails are as much as $20 and the city boasts some of the most unaffordable housing in the world.

Sydney (11), Melbourne (15) and Perth (19) now rank among the world’s most expensive cities, while London languishes in 25th spot and New York in 33rd, according to the Mercer Worldwide Cost of Living Survey 2012 released this month.

An average flat in Sydney – sharing with one other – is a small box to be leased for about $700 a week. But it has a glimpse of the sea through the bars on the windows.

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